The Dragon Chief
by Delusional Fishies
Summary: Lost, without much of her memories, and alone. She must survive with only her wits and her prowess, her sheath and her sword. She must recover her memories, destroy the coming darkness... or more than one world will be lost.
1. Chapter 1

**The Dragon Chief**

* * *

><p><em>There are those who embrace destiny; those are the people who change the world forever... yet there are others, who do not embrace their destinies, but defy much more than even Fate.<em>

* * *

><p>What does one feel when all is lost? How is one supposed to feel?<p>

As her body dissolves into motes of prana that slowly flutter into the air, all she could do is lament her many regrets. She has so many accomplishments, only to be drown in many more failures. But what was she supposed to feel now...?

**DIE. DIE. DIE.**

Two sets of memories assault her mind, both only diverting from each other at the beginning of the Fifth Holy Grail War of Fuyuki City. As a thousand images flash through her mind, lamentation gives way to confusion. What exactly was going on, she wonders yet could not voice. The few warm memories of sharing a wondrous meal in the Emiya household with Emiya Shirou's friends and family are offset by a multitude of different images. Through her eyes, she sees the cruelest imitations of war, feels the tortures of devilish magi, and endures the very corruption of all that is evil...

...All that is evil? Ah, she remembers now, digging through her dual sets of memories. Angra Mainyu, the sum of all evils...

**DIE.**

...She sees things not meant for even immortal eyes. Her now oh-so-fragile and surprisingly human mind flinches and cries as madness fills her very being. Only a soft golden warmth within her keeps the darkness from consuming her in her totality. She knows what its source is. She knows it as well as she knows her own body. But at the same time, it should not be here, not after how twisted she has become. But it is here. Within her—

—Sludge flows everywhere. All around her, the black shadows bubble and claw at her. It is a crawling chaos, slothfully trying to consume her. Only that which remains within her keeps her fragile mind whole. She tries to call out its name, to banish the darkness. But she finds that she cannot utter its name even as the dark mud slowly wraps around her mouth and neck, choking and suffocating her. Even as her eyes fill with mad lunacy, even as her cheeks are streaked with tears of regret, she cannot call out its name in her mind.

**DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE. DIE.**

She has forgotten so much, leaving her with so little. The blackness burns at her, consuming what little she remembers. The images within her mind burn, like a film rail that has been cut and set on fire, burning and melting into nothingness, leaving only blankness in its wake.

Twinkle...

_What is for dinner tonight Shirou? Hm? Who is Shirou? Who am I? Where am I? What is dinner? Tonight? What date is it? What is a date? There is darkness everywhere, why can't I see anything? Why can't I open my mouth? Why...? _As it surrounds her, soft speckles of bright, white lights drift around her. She cannot see these cool, soothing lights, but as they make contact with her body, they fade._ No, they are melting... is this... snow?_

Twinkle...

Something stands in the distance. Ah, it is someone, a girl. She knows her; the distinctive white, silky hair, intelligent, red eyes, and soft, understanding smile. She... she struggles, trying to remember; the pieces of her mind fit imperfectly. She knows this girl! The girl... she... she served her once? No, someone like her, perhaps? The girl is glowing with bright, white light, calling to her...

...But does she want to reach for the girl? All she could feel within is pain. Why prolong it when the darkness could swallow her whole and end it right there? Why indeed?

She does not linger. She is a woman of action. The closer she is to the girl, the more she could identify of her—and the more her memories reforge themselves. A white crown... a silvery robe, constructed of gold... outstretched hands... As the girl moves closer, the cooler her body feels. The mud no longer burns at her skin. Snow? The whiteness drifts towards her, driving the blackness away.

...**die**...?

...She leans forward, her hands penetrate the mud. It drips from her fingers, but the girl grasps her. She pulls her out of the darkness and embraces her. What is going on? Why cannot her ears receive any sound? The girl in white is saying something, whispering it to her. But she could not understand. She wants to, doesn't she? Yes, yes...

...The white light envelopes her, devouring her without pause. But she feels... peace? Is this what peace feels like? How long has she yearned for it—

"—Oof!" She gasps as she collapses onto the ground. Ground? She looks around her, seeing only wild flora that she cannot recognize completely. She looks down at herself, seeing a strange, aquatic blue gown donned onto her body, torn in many places. On her lap rests an intricately woven scabbard, sheath for a golden sword. Her heart warms as her eyes take into the sight of this beautiful weapon. A sense of familiarity washes over her, one that she recognizes as longing.

Instinctively, her arms wrap around the scabbard, basking in its healing warmth and pulling it close to her body. Her chest presses against the cool, golden surface and she lets out a soft, agonizingly comfortable sigh. She belonged with this scabbard, this sword, this...

...She frowns, staring down at her arms. The comfortable blue fabric that covers her arms have many tears and many burns in it. Her mind could categorize each individual scratch and pock mark. She sees slices, slashes, thrusts, burns, explosions and many other signs of battle. She swallows slowly, heart pounding audibly in her chest. Is she a warrior then? Why does she so long for peace?

But such thoughts are not for her, at least not now.

A rustling around her shakes her from her reverie. She smiles grimly, remembering that she is still in an unknown jungle, with only part of her memories. If she is really a warrior, then perhaps she is even in enemy territory?

Through the branches and leaves of green, yellow and brown, she sees a coming darkness. Ah, it is so faint, yet so like the darkness that, just moments ago, was choking the very essence of her being out of her mortal shell. A frown mars her visage once more—she sees the darkness clearly now, in the shadows of the forest. A group of these things, almost one hundred in number, approach her. They look like they should be dead, wearing tainted, bloody armors covered in rust or decay...

...As they sense her, see her, their howls pierce the air. Somehow, she knows what to call them.

_Darkspawn._


	2. Chapter 2

**The Dragon Chief**

* * *

><p><em>The Chantry teaches that it is the hubris of men that has brought the Blight onto the world. But is this really so, or only yet another tidbit of speculation?<em>

* * *

><p>The beasts around her growled. <em>These are beasts, for they can be nothing else. They are not men even if they resemble the human shape<em>. _They cannot be spirits, for even spirits have a purpose. They are puppets, wavering under their evil strings, whose only purpose is to watch as the world burns._ She thinks, yet cannot act. She wants to stand up and defend herself, to rid her vision of the monstrosities in forms of twisted men. But her hands tremble and her knees feel weak.

She swallows, confused because she wanted to stand up and knew what her body could do. She blinks away the tears of fear welling up in the corners of her eyes as her mind races to understand. Understand is all she could do now... and in seconds, she realizes what is wrong...

...She does not remember how to stand for her beliefs.

When did she forget? When did her body only reacted and her mind stopped guiding her hand? When did all the fighting stop being a struggle of life or death, and she only, simply followed? Had becoming a servant change her so—

—Servant?

Servant... such a simple word, with such simple meanings, she clenches her jaws and clutches her head tightly. So many images, recent memories, of battle fought and lives lived flows through her mind. Her eyes glimmers as she blinks away tears and _remembers._ She remembers her body. She remembers living, and seeing others stand for their beliefs.

So she imitates her memories, struggling up clumsily. Using the sword within the scabbard to support herself, her legs support her raise shakily. She plants her two feet at each side of the sword and her hands tightly around its hilt. The muscles within her shoulders, her back, and her arms scream at her, as if they had been just formed or created—having this be their first time to be used. Sweat trickled down her face as she breathed heavily, trying her best to support herself.

In her mind, she sees not her own body at all, but someone else's. There is a confident, yet pathetically weak, man in her mind, with fiery hair and defiant pose. He stands before her eyes, standing up for something intangible, untouchable. She remembers the moment she saw this, so long ago. She had then felt the distance between her and this man to be as vast as the oceans that separate the lands; he still stood even though infinitely weaker than her, yet his will infinitely stronger...

...So now she prays, her body mimicking the man's confidence. His presence is something she could never emulate, but she knows even now that to stand up for herself, she must stand up tall and straight, like him.

The first _Darkspawn_ charges to her position. She grins grimly, _enemies never give you the time to prepare yourself in war, _a voice whispered into her ears like a soft, billowing wind. She pays it no attention, thinking it just a figment of her wild, confused mind at work. Instead, her focus is fully upon the first Darkspawn to enter her small clearing; her mind slowly slipping into a state which is foreign to her completely. She sees it clearly now, and it seems to be moving slowly at her... too slowly. As her glaze drops low, she sees that both of its feet have not touched the ground in seconds. Understand comes quickly; it is not that the Darkspawn is moving slowly, but her own perceptions are far too quick for it. She sees its pale gray, wrinkled skin, so white it could have been like chalk. She sees its blackened armored, which is tainted not _just_ by its suffocating blood, but by dirt, grim, and filth of all kinds. Its eyes are white, even its pupils are so pale she could barely see it. There is no focus in its eyes, only primal emotions: hunger, rage, sorrow, pain... Its armor clinks awkwardly, as it charges, she sees that one side of it is not covered fully by the strange metals it wore at all. From all that she could gather from her memories, it looks far more like a nightmarish ghoul than any other terror of myths.

Her hands move without her mind telling them what to do. A voice inside her wonders curiously, finding it strange that her grip on the hilt has flips and that her right hand hand slides down the smooth sheath, pulling it off the sword and planting it to her side. As the blade and edge slides soundlessly out of her scabbard, her body calmly brings her arm upwards and across. An invisible blade slides into the Darkspawn's armor from below the right side of its torso and cleanly cuts upwards until it exits the Darkspawn's body through its left shoulder. She does not even know it happened, until it happened and she replayed the scene within her mind.

Baffled, she stares down at the blade in her hands, which is completely invisible with exception of its golden hilt. Small specks of black blood and ichor linger for less than seconds, flying off of the blade as if a wild wind had blew it away. Or that these disgusting drops of black liquid had never touched the steel of her blade to begin with?

Her eyes fly open, as growls promising violence reach her ears. As she narrows her glaze at the ninety-something more horrors that sensed her, she reached a minor epiphany. She knows now that she would need to allow her body to guide her mind, as much as she hates for her to stop being free to guide herself. She had not even know she could cut through an entire body so cleanly!

A thin, wicked grin reaches her lips as she readjusts her grip on her blade. She does not know who she truly is, she does not know her name, her sword's name, or her sheath's name, and she is truly alone. Yet she is not worried. A strange sense of peace wrapped around her like a comfortable blanket. As her feet launches her body forwards, strange energy burst forth from her very being and all around her, a solid, loud boom of displaced air shoots in all directions. Moving faster than the sound of the explosion of air, she brings down her blade on her second victim, splitting it cleanly down the middle in half.

Without even a single glaze at the body, her arms bring the blade across in a slash. Once more the energy within her very _soul_ calls for destruction. Confused, yet ready to act, she releases that energy. A horizontal blade of air cuts through the air, slicing through the multitude of trees and enemies, cutting them all straight through the waist before a second gale bursts through, dicing all the Darkspawns within reach into many tiny pieces of nothingness.

She does not stop, she does not pause, as if all she does from dawn to dusk was a harmonious slaughter these pathetic horrors that plague humanity. She stabs her blade below her arms, under her armpit. A thrust of wind explodes through, pulverizing all those that tried to sneak up from behind her. Only half of the number of Darkspawns remain...

...And they pause, as if frightened. But she knows, she knows better. They are not frightened, merely seeking another route to her destruction. But she will not allow it.

Bringing her sword over her shoulders, she slashes across once more, unleashing all that she can muster from her reserves. The resulting gales are more like a multitude of torrents, hundreds of wind blades twisting and howling for blood and death. Before her might, even hundreds of meters of the forest has been reduced to wasteland. Dozens of pools of black blood splattered all over the ground, seeping and corrupting even when there is nothing to corrupt. Only a single beast withstood her blast...

...And she knew its name. _Ogre._

It is huge, body brimming with might. It height is at least three of her own, and even its arms are doubly thicker than her entire body. Its purple skin pulsed with rage as spittle flew from its mouth. She unconsciously took a step back, as hazy images of a gray body, similar to this filtered into her mind.

Its arms drop to its sides slowly. Dozens of cuts layer all over its body, the Ogre cannot stand much longer, as many of these cuts bleed freely. It howls in pain as its eyes turn to her, angry for revenge. It charges to her, faster than all the other, regular Darkspawn, each step resulting the very earth beneath her feet to tremble.

Her feet slip loosely, the tremors of the charging Ogre more than enough to knock over her clumsy footing...

...As it reaches her, merely inches away, her sword flies up. She snaps her hilt left and right quickly, so fast that the sounds of her two movements were one. Both hits pushed her hilt forth, smashing the Ogre's wrists. Before its arms even flies all the way to their limits, she leaped forward and kicked onto the Ogre's chest, causing it to stumble back from the pure force she deployed. Then, that same leg folds back and her knee rams the Ogre onto its knees before pushing against its chest all the way until its knees were cracked and its back touched the forest floor.

With both hands, she raises her sword once more. She steps onto the Ogre, nailing it to the ground even as it struggles to right itself and flails its arms wildly at her. In a simple, cruel motion, her blade stabs into the Ogre's chest, before she slashes it upwards, cutting from the Ogre's chest up and through its skull.

Only then, as she surveys the killing field, which is now littered with body parts, does she realize that she is breathing heavily. All the muscles and all the organs of her body are screaming at her to stop, to rest. It is as if her body had not taken _any_ action before this... but that cannot be true, can it? In one motion, she whips her sword out of the Ogre's body, leaving a thin line of black blood and gray brain matter on the forest floor. She brings her free hand up to wipe the sweat from her forehead, before she staggers back to where she had planted her sheath...

..._Where am I?_ She finally wonders.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Dragon Chief**

* * *

><p><em>The Tevinter Imperium once revered seven gods: Dumat, Zazikel, Toth, Andoral, Razikale, Lusacan, and Urthemiel. Dumat, Zazikel, Toth, and Andoral each rose and fell in their respective Blights, wrecking upon the world the burning fires of chaos and hatred. They were the most powerful of their brethren, yet the remaining three may yet see an age of awakening.<em>

* * *

><p>"What is... my name?" She wonders aloud as she trudges through the blood tinted flora of the forest to her sheath. As she draws closer, with each step, her breathing becomes lighter and her muscles ache less. The moment her fingertips brushes against this wondrous sheath of gold and blue, she feels renewed. Blinking rapidly, she stares down at the sheath, hoping that it would clue her in on her origins. Yet all it does is remain still and silent, glimmering up at her with the light that falls through the thick canopy of the wild forest.<p>

From a distance, she hears others approaching. But instead of the accompanying throaty growls, she hears words of man, both hearty and frightened. These are tense words, heavy in the air. They are no Darkspawn, she knows; yet she have not sheathed her invisible blade, merely hiding its hilt to her side.

She hears them well, there are just over fifty men, accompanied by over twenty growling... something... Something tickles her mind, and she remembers the words. _Dogs_. The patterns of their barks and growls indicate that they are at least intelligent, but she cannot guess how she knows this. All she knows is that they are less than a hundred meters away...

"—Archers ready a volley! Ash warriors, steady!" A confident, cocky voice calls out before whispering, "Gregor, you promised! You promised they would be here!" The voice hisses.

Her eyes dart through the foliage. These interlopers shall enter her tiny clearing, and come upon the sight of the aftermath of her sword strikes. What will they think of this one-sided battle, she wonders. Are they friends, or are they more foes?

"Milord, I really warn against this; there are possibly over a hundred Darkspawn in hiding, ready to ambush," a gruff, older man replies. His words are short and his breathing is tense, but she senses he is ready for combat. Just like her.

"Oh, calm down Gregor, the scouts having been reporting nothing for the past hour," the first voice replies once more. He is a young one, she hears. He is excited, if the trembling of his voice is any indication, but she will stand and wait. Perhaps this group will tell her more of herself than she could learn otherwise?

_Bark! Bark! Bark!_

There is a rustling as this group reaches close enough to her to see her, many hush whispers echoing into her ears. She frowns, distilling the whispers to hear their emotions, of fears and anxiety, of curiosity and confusion. She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. Her heart is beating faster, and she something fluttery is twisting in her belly. Slowly, she sighs out of a breath, trying to calm herself through her breathing. _Is meeting others like myself such an... exciting thing?_ She wonders as her glaze lowers to her hands. Her hands are trembling...

"By the Maker, wha—" The younger lord is cut off by the older man next to him. Is he a bodyguard? A knight, perhaps? A handler or babysitter?

She sees them clearly now. Though most of the soldiers are clothed in scale and chain mail made of some kind of red iron, there stands one youth in the midst of this group who stands out like a beacon. Wrapped around him like a shell from head to toe is a completely golden armor. With a glimmering sword in one hand and an artistic shield in the other, she muses that this outfit was commissioned for him to appear majestic, perhaps? His strides are confident, even as he stumbles upon seeing her...

...Beside him, another man stands, the one she deems to be the older, experienced warrior here to protect this young lord, perhaps? He is large, burly man with very dark skin, unlike those around him. He has a distinct beard that sprouts from all sides of his face. She estimates that he stands at almost twice her height. He wears a silvery metal, covered by a white tabard of dyed leather, covered in grim on its edges. Instinctively, he thrusts an arm between her and his lord, crouching and ready to fight.

"My lord, that is... no ordinary human," he growls. His eyes narrow at her, which confuses her. Does he not know who she is then? Perhaps they are not exactly friends, but for her to be suspected of being something _strange_, does that mean they cannot do the same as she—destroy such a small number of Darkspawn?

"O-Of course not!" The young lord laughs, his long, golden locks swaying as he jumps and pushes his protector aside. "She's a beauty, that's what she is!" He raises a gold clad arm and waves at her, "Ho, there! What happened here and who are you?"

"Sire..." The burly man half-whimpers, eying her with fear of all things. How peculiar.

The younger man laughs at his companion, waving his gold covered hand at him twice, limply at the wrist. He then whispers to his older companion in a conspiratorial tone, "Come now, my good man. Allow me my fun, you know what they say? Like a King, eh?"


End file.
